mood indigo

For the second time in three days (it must be the holiday season?), I went along to the Watershed cinema. This time I saw Michel Gondry’s film “Mood Indigo” – with Romain Duris playing Colin and Audrey Tautou playing Chloe. The film’s adapted from Boris Vian‘s 1947 novel “The Froth of Days”; it’s set in Paris and tells the story of two lovers who marry (in an underwater ceremony!) after a whirlwind romance, but whose bliss is interrupted by news that Chloe is suffering from a strange illness (she has a water lily growing on her lungs)…
Gondry uses all his own visual inventiveness to create a wonderful, fantastic (literally) and colourful way – with inventor Colin’s bizarre and eccentric creations. The result is visually stunning (and surreal in the extreme) and, at times, very funny… but as the film’s storyline becomes more sombre, so it becomes more monochrome.
My main reasons for seeing the film were clearly Audrey Tautou (of course!) and Paris – plus being intrigued by some of the film images I’d seen. It proved to be a mesmerizingly inventive film (sometimes just a little too ridiculous for me), but also one that I found both surprisingly sad and poignant.
PS: The film title relates to the composition by Duke Ellington, whose music is a continual theme.